‘THERE WAS NO COLUSION’ And Other Edits Trump Scrawled On His Statement

on June 21, 2018 in Washington, DC.
WASHINGTON, DC - JUNE 21: U.S. President Donald Trump speaks while holding up a pen he said he would use to sign immigration legislation during a cabinet meeting at the White House June 21, 2018 in Washington, DC. T... WASHINGTON, DC - JUNE 21: U.S. President Donald Trump speaks while holding up a pen he said he would use to sign immigration legislation during a cabinet meeting at the White House June 21, 2018 in Washington, DC. Trump spoke extensively about current immigration issues during the meeting. Also pictured is U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo (L). (Photo by Win McNamee/Getty Images) MORE LESS
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In his preferred black marker, President Donald Trump made handwritten edits to the public statement meant to mitigate his disastrous joint press conference with Russian President Vladimir Putin on Monday, according to a Tuesday Washington Post report.

Sharp-eyed photographers got shots of the four-page document. In all caps and a misspelling, Trump reminded himself on the first page that “THERE WAS NO COLUSION.”

He also struck a sentence concerning “anyone involved in that meddling to justice.”

Per the Post, other changes include his adding of “for years, relations could not have [illegible] worse,” and striking a paragraph reading “Now I understand there are some in Washington who don’t want diplomacy. This rejection of diplomacy is the same mindset that dragged us into Iraq and Libya.” He also crossed out a line following that said: “Any fool can start a war, but real [illegible] is forging peace.”

The shots of his prepared remarks also allow readers to see where he ad-libbed in his spoken statement. Most notably, he verbally added the following paragraph after asserting that he believes the intelligence agencies’ findings that Russia did hack the 2016 election:

“Could be other people also. A lot of people out there. There was no collusion at all, and people have seen that and they’ve seen that strongly. The House has already come out very strongly on that, a lot of people have come out strongly on that. …”

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Notable Replies

  1. How can this get much worse… We need headlines all over saying

    THERE WAS COLLUSION.

    A crawl on Fox would be nice too… but that is probably asking for too much

  2. "Strongly" Your fascination with that word makes me suspect the opposite is a constant source of psychic discomfort for you.

  3. Stable genius edits. Guaranteed to make prepared remarks even better.

    Because the remarks someone else prepared did not do enough to defend Trump …

    Or Russia.

  4. also scrawled yes, it did taste like mother’s milk

  5. I can’t make out if there is stage direction for the lights to go out too, of if that was also an ad lib. In any case, the story line for this season is just not believable.

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